So what is human?

Monday September 21, 2015
F: About “which you” – a question, I think inspired by something I read somewhere yesterday, John Wolf’s maybe. I got, from somewhere, a reminder that we aren’t all human, aren’t all animal, aren’t all anything. Expound upon that, please.
TGU: As you wish. You are delving deeper below appearances, now, and you can see that much of this reality cannot be expressed in meaningful, manipulable, ways so that the average hurried harried person can understand. It can’t be put into a sound-bite. Or, it can, but then the sound-bite doesn’t (can’t) convey much. “All is one” says it in a nutshell—but how many think to crack the nut?
F: If I’m understanding you, you are saying the distortions that creep into or even underlie various religious and scientific understandings stem from lack of understanding the true nature of things, in the same way that psychology necessarily goes wrong if it assumes it is dealing with units instead of communities.

TGU: Not even distortions, but the very base of such systems is necessarily wrong because of wrong assumptions, wrong understandings.
But what is the alternative? We’ll give you a contemporary example. You have people trying to teach what they call “common core” math, and it is based on a more sophisticated understanding of what multiplication really is. That “common core” math is valid but it is not necessarily useful. Shorthand methods work better in practical terms, and to those oriented toward results, shorthand is preferable to the longer process that comes to the same result.
In fact, this is a better example than we had hoped, because it really does encapsulate the situation. Religion says “all is one” and people get what will help them regardless of what they do or don’t know about how all is one. Science says E=MC2 [I can’t find superscript, but presumably you realize that here the two means “squared”], and people get what they need in realizing that matter is not as solid as it appears to be and this “fact” can be “proven” and so they don’t have to wonder about it.
You see? The shortcuts are not an unreliable or deplorable falling-off from the “right” way to see things. They are the only handles many people have with which to grasp intangibles. Or should religions wait until everybody in the world has read your book? And, if so, why not wait for another book that will get an inch closer to the “real” truth? And, if so, why not wait for the book after that?
In short, life is always coming at you, and you have to deal with it moment by moment; you don’t get to wait for the instruction manual. That being the case – and people being busy and anyway not always inclined to investigate – of course it will have to be done by way of shortcut statements. You could never live long enough to get to a statement that wasn’t a shortcut.
So, we are happy to keep refining your understanding, as much and as long and as many times as you wish, but know up front that we are never going to be able to give you “the final word” on anything, because to do so we would have to give you the final word on everything, and even if that could be given, and could be received – it is always changing.
The advantage to such exploration is that a more refined understanding is always good in and of itself if it is something that is by nature important to you. It isn’t a waste of time and effort. For some, it will come as a liberating revelation, and it is worthwhile for that alone.
F: You mean, I take it, that it is worthwhile to loosen the bonds of a given belief-system in and of itself.
TGU: Well – yes and no. It depends. For some personalities (which in context means some group expressions of community consensus) certainty is essential; the alternative for them is not tentative belief but terrifying chaos. For such people, even the most simplistic religion, be it fundamentalist Christian or behaviorist science, is not so much a choice as a necessity. For other types, such certainty is unconvincing and suffocating. It is only for the latter types that the loosening of bonds is desirable or even possible.
So, after what will be a digression to some but not to others, we return to your initiating question. Depending upon how far you probe, of course you as individual-community beings are not all human, or, as you put it, “all anything.” But the practical question is, to what extent does this have an effect on me?
F: I see where you are going with that. Say “all is one” and then what? We are part of every nebula and beyond in one direction, every quark and lepton in another direction, every ghost and thought-form in yet another direction. But what good does it do us to know this abstractly? What effect does the concept have on our actual mental (or even physical) life?
TGU: Of course, and the answer is, you see another level of underlying complexity when you are ready for it. It isn’t like you have to repeat sixth grade forever, and it isn’t like you have to go into the seventh grade before you have outgrown the sixth.
F: Not the earth-school analogy, I hope!
TGU: Let’s call it the life-experience progression, then, who cares? The point is that because you (we) are beings of infinite numbers of stages –
No, that isn’t the way to say it. A moment.
[I timed it; actually, it was seven seconds.]
Because you extend from the highest to the lowest, no matter what the scale or measurement, there is always an appropriate receptor and an appropriate stimulus. Does that need translating?
F: Maybe. Let’s try this. We are compound beings, so, in effect, different parts of us resonate to different levels of complexity or whatever, so wherever we are, at least part of us belongs and can therefore fit in.
TGU: And therefore wherever you are, parts of you do not belong do not fit in. Depending on your – mood, we might almost call it – you identify with the part that does fit in or the part that does not, and you are therefore comfortable or uncomfortable with wherever you are. When you are so moved — you move. When you are content – you pause.
F: As always, this hasn’t gone the way that I expected I am certainly not complaining, just mentioning it. I thought we might discuss what the various non-human parts of us are.
TGU: In a way, we did that, only we went a little deeper. After all, what does “human” mean? The definition depends entirely upon what scale of things you employ. To some people it means discrete individuals in bodies, either with or without souls (season to taste). To others it means a certain shared energy, a human-as-opposed-to-the-rest-of-nature energy. Others see it, now, as communities of “past lives,” or as communities of cohabiting traits or tendencies or personalities. We could go on, but why bother? If you forget that essence changes appearance according to the nature of the observer, you will never see beyond the surface. If you remember it, you will never think that you have gotten to the “real” essence.
F: It’s a matter of personality.
TGU: Seemingly. Really, it is a matter of timing. Every conceivable type of personality exists within you. What manifests is a combination of what you will to be (choices, you see) and what your surroundings evoke. And since your surroundings are you – are not the external “objective” things you seem to experience – this is another way of pointing out that your life is being somewhat steered.
F: It’s a paradox, isn’t it? Free will and coercion, or let’s say steering.
TGU: Any position held sincerely by any one or more people has some element of truth in it – and no such position has all the truth in it. You know that.
F: I do. It makes me wishy-washy in dealing with others.
TGU: What “others”?
F: Touché. Done for today?
TGU: We’re always ready when you are.
F: Our thanks as usual. I see I neglected to note what time we began. We end at 7:43 a.m.